-
Website
http://publishing2.com/ -
Original page
http://publishing2.com/2008/01/19/developing-algorithms-to-prevent-citizen-journalism-from-being-gamed-lessons-from-google-and-digg/ -
Subscribe
All Comments -
Community
-
-
Top Commenters
-
Popular Threads
Hardly the kind of place that you're going to find them, though, is it? But the fact is that a lot of publishers *will* use "citizen journalism" (can't we call it what it is - amateur journalism?) as an excuse to cut costs.
I've never met a publisher who wouldn't sacrifice 10% quality for a 15% cost saving. The problem is that if you cut the quality of 10% repeatedly, you end up with something with no quality at all.
"I’ve never met a publisher who wouldn’t sacrifice 10% quality for a 15% cost saving."
Is that because publishers are evil "bean counters" who don't care about quality? Or is it because the newspaper business model is collapsing?
The fact is that newspapers do have less money to pay journalists. So we can hand wring and blame it on the bean counters. Or we can figure out new models to enable journalism to evolve through the new economic realities -- and maybe find ways to improve the futures of companies that support journalism.
Jeff's conferences was about figuring out how to make new models work WITHOUT losing quality -- doesn't mean it won't happen in some instances. But bitterly wishing for the good old days isn't a very constructive alternative.
And you have to ask the question: is the newspaper business collapsing because publishers have, since the early 1990's, been looking for every opportunity to trim the size of their newsrooms?
Does the fact that newspaper reporters have continually been "encourage" to write more and more stories per day not mean that the quality of their output declined - and might that decline in quality not have had something to do with people no longer seeing the value in newspapers?
And this, of course, isn't just in newspapers: the same is true in magazines. Far too many publishers have seen the switch to digital simply as an opportunity to get more output from less journalists. No matter how you dress it up, more stories per day means less time to work on each story, which encourages "me too" posts and less originality.
Think back to that description of the UK Daily Telegraph news room, where reporters are encouraged to stare at screens all day instead of developing sources and actually talking to people. Does that encourage quality? No - it's about quantity.
"Jeff’s conferences was about figuring out how to make new models work WITHOUT losing quality — doesn’t mean it won’t happen in some instances."
Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm not criticising Jeff's conferences in any way, and Jeff does some amazing work. Some of it genuinely opens up new ways to do news and disseminate ideas. And he balances things out very well, too.
"But bitterly wishing for the good old days isn’t a very constructive alternative."
Actually, if quality is being lost then the most constructive thing you can do is point it out. Pretending that the opposite is true, and that you can get the same or better quality of content for less money isn't being constructive - it's either naive, or disingenuous.
"Pretending that the opposite is true,"
Who is pretending the opposite is true? Painting everything in black and white is why the industry is having so much trouble evolving. This post is all about the risk and trying to look at ways to address it, rather than simply hand-wringing.
"And you have to ask the question: is the newspaper business collapsing because publishers have, since the early 1990’s, been looking for every opportunity to trim the size of their newsrooms?"
It's notable that you mention the exogenous factor here -- that newspaper readership has been declining since the early 1990's, and that the newspaper's economic model has been accelerating its decline in the last few years.
Where, exactly, do you believe publishers should find the money to pay journalists to write the same number of stories that they did back in the glory days of the newspaper's high profit margin?
The risk of declining quality is very real -- but so is the rapid decline of newspaper economic fortunes.
Instead of seeing it in black and white, i.e. old model = high quality, and new models = compromised quality, why not focus on how new models can be implemented to maintain quality standards?
It's easy to argue that the newspaper business is declining strictly because of declining quality. But the reality is that the emergence of digital media and the increasing obsolescence of the newspaper distribution model has do far more to accelerate the decline.
You do what businessmen everywhere have done during tough times - invest the money and take a risk. The risk, of course, is judging that better quality content will sell more papers/get more views (the medium is actually unimportant) and thus bring you more market share than your competitors. But taking risks is *not* what newspaper or magazine publishers are very good at.
"It’s easy to argue that the newspaper business is declining strictly because of declining quality."
Actually, I don't think that *is* an easy argument to make. it's far easier, in my opinion, to simply say that the underlying economic model has changed and therefore we can't afford to do quality stuff anymore.
In reality, of course, it's a mix of the two: declining ad revenues means job cuts means lower quality means less incentive for readers to buy means declining ad revenues... and on and on.
However, to come back to the original point... are you really saying that you can get the same or better quality journalism by reducing permanent staff numbers, increasing the workload of the remaining staff, and increasing reliance on unpaid, amateur journalists?
The techniques of gaming Google & Digg (algorithmic systems) have almost nothing in common with gaming newspaper editors (a human system), and thus the techniques of counter-gaming would be entirely different. They have nothing in common: your subject line is misleading.
I sympathize with Weinstein's argument becaue I've argued it before. But it's wholly incomplete because it fails to recognize the amount of PR-channeling that the traditional press has done. At times like these, I pull out my handy Schudson. "In 1930, political scientist Peter Odegard estimated that 50 perecent of news items originated in public relations work..." (Discovering the News, 1978, p.144, note 66).
The burden remains on us-- media obsessives that we are-- to provide some solid data either way on quality metrics in journalism per variables like market, staff size, and yes, CitJ. There's only so many Philip Meyers to go around.
My worry is twofold. One, keeping in mind Philip Meyers, the dean of statistical journalism, is that because of technology the quick appears to be increasingly beating out the deep in journalism. I don't see CitJ countering that, unless you have CitJ folks putting more effort into stats than into "personal opinion"), and you have editors respecting that (When I finally finished crunching the TimesSelect in November, here's the response I got from a prominent forwarder of newsroom memos: you're data's a month old.)
Second-- sorry I can't link to analysis of BLS numbers that's still in my draft folders-- but we also must consider the occupational pressures of choosing a journalism career. In short, the BLS projects that press jobs are going to stay flat while the PR industry is expected to grow by over thirty percent in the next ten years. And consider the salaries as well. PR salaries are closer to software engineers (and exceed them at the management levels...), while print journalists barely meet the salaries of cable layers.
"However, to come back to the original point… are you really saying that you can get the same or better quality journalism by reducing permanent staff numbers, increasing the workload of the remaining staff, and increasing reliance on unpaid, amateur journalists?"
I'm saying that since many newspapers will have no choice but to try, we'd better start focusing on HOW.
More importantly, I'm saying that media has fundamentally changed, and new economic models are still being figured out. Investing more in old models is not a recipe for success.
No, your duty as a journalist who cares about journalism isn't just to state the problem -- it's to help figure out the solution. And you know what? It's going to be HARD -- it's going to require MORE work. Frankly, I think journalists who expect everything to just fix itself without more work are better labeled "lazy". The sense of entitlement in the midst of difficult, radical change is sometimes striking.
But let me ask you this -- do you really think that in digital,network media context most journalists are making best use of their time and available resources? Do you really think the answer is to let journalists continue to do things the same way? Is there no room for improved productivity?
When the word processor was first introduced, journalists kept wailing away on typewriters, much to the detriment of productivity.
Journalists may think they ought to protected from the demands of producivity -- but they can't be any more.
It's as much the journalist's responsibility now as the publisher's to figure out how quality journalism can be economically viable.
I also hope you're not aiming the "lazy" jibes at me. You don't know me from Adam, and I find it offensive and frankly below you to resort to jibes like that. It does nothing for your argument, either.
Improved productivity - yes of course. But at some point, "improved productivity" becomes "less quality", when you push reduced staffing beyond the point where better technology can compensate. At that point, if you don't put your hand up and say "hey, this won't work" you're not doing your job properly.
"When the word processor was first introduced, journalists kept wailing away on typewriters, much to the detriment of productivity."
I suspect the journalists I know who bought tandy Model 102's out of their own money because their papers didn't see the point would disagree with you.
"Journalists may think they ought to protected from the demands of producivity — but they can’t be any more."
Well, now you're just heading into a standard "you old media guys don't understand!" rant. Which, again, is something you're better than.
Second, this business about an "algorithm", if by that Scott means a discrete set of mathematical or procedural(I call it the knitting model, meaning "knit one, pearl two")steps to obviate what happens when off-the-wall thinking and language emananting from citizen journlaism intersects with technlogy on the one hand and serious news telling on the other.
Scott refuses, so far as I can tell, to entertain something that is really rather obvious if Scott will look at, and THINK about, what (for example) Intel CEO Paul Otellini is talking about in this URL:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/61112.html
It seems to me that "intellectuals" like Scott always manage to find something problematic in the notion of crises of one kind or another: generally because they invent most of them themselves. In this instance an algorithm?
What is required here is some serious thinking, which Scott is not yet doing, even though he clearly is capable of doing it, about the deep structural impediments manifest in the Web itself, rather than
the knit one, pearl two "problem" of the corrupting influences of the illiterate masses when they invade news telling with web logs or whatever.
I'm not going to tell Scott how to deal with HIS problem, which is that Scott(God bless him!) is not yet thinking hard enough. Read the above-mentioned URL, Scott, and then start thinking and, perhaps, writing about what Otellini is actually saying.
Of course I'm not accusing you personally of laziness, and you're right I would have no basis of do so. But I have seen that attitude first hand in others -- my point is that there's as much "laziness" on the editorial side as the business side, i.e. It cuts both ways.
But what does "put more money into quality journalism" mean? Pay more people to write for print but not the web? Invest more money in investigative journalism that has huge public value but little standalone commericial value when unbundled from the old newspaper economic bundle, without investing in new business models to support the important journalism?
And really, what does the quality of journalism have to do with the classified advertising business that used to subsidize it? Do you think investing in more quality journalism will bring that business back? The reality is the quality journalism was sustained by a monopoly distribution business model, and the web kiled that business, not bean counting publishers.
As for whether jounrnalists are early adopters of new technology, you're right that some have been and some haven't been. But in this age, any journalist who is not trying to learn how new technologies can improve their productivity and the quality if their work and the economic viability of their business (YES it's their businees) is as culpable as the publishers trying to cut their jobs.
And despite much progress in old media types "getting it," there's still a ways to go.
The problem isn't that journalists can't or wont' do all that. Most - but not, of course, all - welcome the opportunity to enhance their skill set and do new things.
But the problem is that far too many publishers, in all sectors, believe they should more work, rather than different work; that they can, and should, produce ten stories a day instead of three; and are using the shift from print to online as an excuse to make that happen.
Yes, in some cases this is the desperate act of publishers sinking into loss. But in other cases, it's simply that publishers aren't making as much profit as they used to, and see the move from print to online as a method of increasing their profit margin.
Those aren't by and large, the guys going to Jeff's conferences, but they really do exist.
What I'm not saying here is that print is quality, and online isn't. I actually don't do any print work these days, apart from the odd piece of freelance. Falling quality of journalism applies no matter what the medium is.
Of course, I applaud any attempts to do better journalism. But as in any kind of endevour, quality comes down to three things: time, money and talent. If, at the end of the day, the money isn't there to support quality journalism, let's just be honest about that - because readers, at least, deserve to know why their papers aren't as interesting as they used to be.
I organized Jeff's conference. I also work in citizen journalism. So my potential bias is now laid out before you.
I think the discussion both of you are having is well merited and it could go on forever, but it's based on a few assumptions (which were in the Mother Jones article as well) which are false.
Assumption:
Citizen Journalism is sub-par: This might be the case for some articles, but it is not a logical truth. I've seen some amazing citizen journalism.
Assumption:
Citizen journalism is lazy and cheap:
During Assignment Zero, the first major NewAssignment.net project - I did not sleep. We needed more professional journalists and we needed to pay them for the time commitment we were asking of them.
In the end we hired one extra person at the end of the experiment - but if we had more money, we would have hired more and the end product probably would have been better -- and it still would have been "citizen journalism."
As Scott pointed out - it's not a black and white world. This is particularly true in citizen journalism.
The complaint is that CJ takes jobs away from journalists and the quality is sub-par. But citizen journalism (or self-publishing on the web) is not going to disappear - And that is NOT an assumption.
Nor do I think it should. If a journalist wants to play the role of the fourth estate - what better way to do that then to MOTIVATE other people to keep a watchful eye as well.
Journalists need to work WITH amateur reporters - and by doing so we will hopefully improve the quality of their content - and finally: If we do, perhaps, as Ian notes: That quality will be recognized and create more jobs for journalists. Granted the job description will be different - but it will be a job - and still a noble one at that (in my opinion).
You're right that this debate is rife with faulty assumptions, and journalism is going to be stuck in the mud until we re-examine all of our assumptions.
I'd also question assumptions about what defines an amateur vs. a professional journalism. Journalism is not defined by a paycheck. There are undoubtedly journalists collecting a paycheck from a newspapers who are terrible at it, and there are also people who don't work for a news organization with all of the requisite skills and attitude to do good journalism.
And you're right that instead of pigeon holing citizen journalism as free low quality content, why not look at it as a way for professional journalists to extend their reach -- extra sets of hands and eyes and ears for journalists who are overburdened.
Journalists are used to being lone wolves, but in a networked media world, the lone wolf is an island, disconnected and disenfranchised.
A citizen journalist network isn't going to be up to standard out of the box -- it needs to be trained, and journalists need to step up to the plate.
Ian,
Since it's not the case that all publishers are evil bean counters, I felt it was my duty to call Adam Weinstein on his overly broad brush. I brought up Jeff's conference because I think the only way to fix the problem of lazy publishers is to bring them new models that have been proven to work.
Here's one big cause of the overburdened journalist problem -- the newspaper business is split is really two businesses, one small and growing, one large and shrinking. If the online business is not to be a sad rehash of the print business, that requires original content -- which means net MORE content. Publishers can't afford to under-resource the growing online business, nor shut down the shrinking print business, which means journalists need to staff two businesses instead of one.
Is it fair? No. Does it lead to unscrupulous practices? Of course.
Can making use of willing contributors other than the overburdened full-time staff possibly help the situation, if done with the aim of achieving the same high standard? I think it can.
I suppose that was Weinstein's point. I think it's a fair worry. Of course, the way he phrased it, he needs to prove that publishers are actively pursusing this strategy, and I don't think anybody can find one to admit such on record.
My sense is-- and if I had more solid evidence I would write a full essay on this-- that what we will see happen is that we'll see more people become practioners/bloggers before (or instead of) going into journalism.
Another problem in many discussions over CitJ is the failure to consider the other trends outside of Big Journalism -- the trade presses, and hyperlocal media. These have long been realms where more of the copy is supplied by active practitioners.
So, back to the core issue at hand. What methods should editors and readers use to determine what the hidden motivation of various correspondents are? Scott, your premise here is that Google and Digg have something to teach, but you failed to explain how.
"I think the only way to fix the problem of lazy publishers is to bring them new models that have been proven to work."
And that's why, while I sometimes disagree with the specifics of the ideas that Jeff puts forward, I think his aim is correct - and yours, too.
I think Alan Patrick has actually ended up putting my overall point better than I have in a post over on his blog when he asks "what will you pay for accurate citizen journalism?" The worry I have - and I admit that I'm feeling a bit doom-laden today - is that the answer is "not enough to actually make it work".
However, I support any and all efforts to make it happen!
Steven Eng
newmediaplanner.com